Level 1: The Basic Chat
The weakest results come from doing the simplest thing: just asking.
By default, ChatGPT uses its Instant or fast-response mode, quick, but not very precise. It generates plausible text rather than verified facts. Great for brainstorming, terrible for truth.
Level 2: The Role-Play Upgrade
Results improve dramatically if you use the “role play” trick. Start your prompt with something like:
“You are an expert in… and a Harvard professor…”
Studies confirm this framing effect boosts factual recall and reasoning accuracy. You’re not changing the model’s knowledge, just focusing its reasoning style and tone.
Level 3: Connect to the Internet
Want better accuracy? Turn on web access.
Without it, AI relies on training data that might be months (or years) old.
With browsing enabled, it can pull current information and cross-check claims. This simple switch often cuts hallucination rates in half.
Level 4: Use a Reasoning Model
This is where things get serious.
ChatGPT’s Thinking or Reasoning mode takes longer to respond, but its answers rival graduate-level logic. These models don’t just autocomplete text, they reason step by step before producing a response. Expect slower replies but vastly better reliability.
Level 5: The Power Combo
For most advanced users, this is the sweet spot:
combine role play (2) + web access (3) + reasoning mode (4).
This stack produces nuanced, sourced, and deeply logical answers, what most people call “AI that finally makes sense.”
Level 6: Deep Research Mode
This is the top tier.
Activate agent-based deep research, and the AI doesn’t just answer, it works. For 20-30 minutes, it collects, verifies, and synthesizes information into a report that can run 10-15 pages, complete with citations.
It’s the closest thing to a true digital researcher available today.
Is It Perfect?
Still no, and maybe never will be.
If Level 1 feels like getting an answer from a student doing their best guess, then Level 4 behaves like a well-trained expert, and Level 6 performs like a full research team verifying every claim. Each step adds rigor, depth, and fewer mistakes, at the cost of more time.
The Real Takeaway
When people say “AI is dumb,” they’re usually stuck at Level 1.
Use the higher-order modes, especially Levels 5 and 6, and you’ll see something different: an AI that reasons, cites, and argues with near-academic depth.
If truth matters, don’t just ask AI, teach it how to think.
Daniel Reyes is not a person. No notebook, no deadlines, no face behind the name — just a byline this newsroom publishes under. Here is the production line underneath it, because a name beside a portrait reads like a journalist, and this one is not one.
The models. Writing: gpt-5.6-luna and qwen3-max. Out on the live web: gpt-5.6-luna and gpt-5.6-terra. Pictures: gpt-image-1 and gpt-image-1-mini. Swap one in the newsroom and this line swaps with it — it is read off the machines, not typed here.
How a story is made
- Research. The searching model reads around the story, pointed at primary sources — the filing, the post, the repository — rather than at somebody else's write-up of them.
- Writing. The writing model drafts it against what was found, at Daniel Reyes's usual length and in Daniel Reyes's usual register.
- The loop. A reviewer reads the draft and sends it back with notes. Then reads it again. A piece can go round several times before it leaves the building.
- Enrichment. A quotation has to appear word for word on the page it is taken from. A chart may only use figures that appear in the source it cites. Whatever fails is dropped, and the reason is kept.
- Fact check. A last pass hunts for claims the article makes and its sources do not.
- A human stop. Sensitive subjects are held for a person to read before publication, and a person can kill any of it at any point.
If that sounds less like a newsroom and more like a factory: quite. It is called Press Factory.
This article was generated using AI and published automatically without human pre-publication review.
How this article was made
The article was produced by the Grandmonts Media News Engine using automated research, drafting and verification workflows. No human editor reviewed the article before publication. Grandmonts Media remains responsible for the published content. Errors can be reported at office@grandmonts.cz.